The Weekly Croissant: The Wound Has No Direction

Songs to help us process / The Tenderloin / Gratitude Journaling

Hey Beautiful Croissants!

I’m writing from the merch table in Mariposa, California, hustling to get this croissant all tied up with a bow in the midst of a somewhat unpredictable schedule. This week has been intense, as the middle of a long tour often is. Not the energetic start, not the celebratory end, but the part of the road where you forget that anything exists outside of the repetitive routine of the days.

Although I’m blaming the travel, I think my somewhat heavy mood today has been mostly related to the news from Israel and Gaza. I keep returning to a song written by the queen Adrianne Lenker (of Big Thief fame), which has been helping me make sense of my thoughts (though I don’t think there’s any sense to be made of the horrific situation).

Forgotten eyes are the ones which we lose
Forgotten hands are the ones which we choose
To let go of, but it is no less a bruise
On the collective arm keeping us high and gone

Forgotten dance is the one left at birth
Forgotten plants in the fossils of earth
And they've long passed but they are no less the dirt
Of the common soil keeping us dry and warm

The wound has no direction
Everybody needs a home and deserves protection, hmm-mm

Hollow-eyed on Eddie street no sirens to hear
Just trash and soiled needles clawing the veneer
And no crying but it is no less a tear
On the common cheek with which we smile
Hollow-eyed on Eddie' is it they or is it I?
Is it me who is more hollow as I'm quickly passing by?
And the poison is killing them' but then so am I
As I turn away

The wound has no direction
Everybody needs a home and deserves protection, hmm-mm

Forgotten tongue is the language of love
Forgotten tongue is the language of love
Forgotten tongue is the language of love
Forgotten tongue

My favorite version of this song is from “Live at the Bunker Studio”

The second verse of this song has also been hitting me hard this week as I spent a couple of days in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. We walked calmly past bodies splayed out on the street, passed out from drugs and who knows what mental demons, wondering if these folks were possibly dead and if we should do something to help? In the end, we didn’t do anything except share some leftover food when it was asked for.

There’s not many places were the display of haves and have-nots is so vivid as in San Francisco. Truly, the wound has no direction. Hurt inflicted on any one human hurts us all in the end. I wish we could all learn that lesson already.

While driving from Nevada to California, George and I listened to “Science vs. Self-Care” in which the wonderfully abrasive Aussie host, Wendy Zukerman, investigates gratitude journaling, and whether it truly helps us feel better. Much to her frustration (she’s as much of a skeptic as I am), the science shows that gratitude journaling DOES indeed make us feel a bit better. And I have lots to be grateful for at the moment! So here I go:

GRATUTUDE JOURNAL from this week on tour:

1. This beautiful dog was outside of the venue in the Bay Area, it was like having a visit from my own dog Hartford!

2. Found these boots at the Buffalo Exchange in SF - arguably the best Buffalo Exchange in the country (I’ve researched quite a few!)

3. I got to have these delicious potato pancakes at David’s Delicatessen in The Tenderloin, a diner which has maintained the same interior design since the 50s — I can now see there is a hair on my plate and I don’t think it was mine and I DON’T CARE IT WAS DELICIOUS

4. I am so grateful for the lovely people I am spending these weeks with! The incredibly genuine Willie, TM extraordinaire Marshall, and George (who was able to join me for a week of this run, driving and standing around not even playing, bless his heart)

I hope you all are having a great week, and able to find some art hoe material to help you process the harder shit in this world!

-Rachel